A quick summary

As an ethnobotanist and writer with a strong background in action research and community engagement, I delight in exploring the elegant complexity of natural and cultural systems with others. In all of my work, I place an emphasis on close observation, active listening and interdisciplinary thinking to address social and ecological challenges creatively. ​My key professional strengths include writing and editing, curriculum development, teaching, facilitation, participatory action research, local and international community-building, and kindness. My ethnobotanical expertise lies in sustainable wild-harvesting practices for medicinal plants of the Pacific Northwest and northern Appalachian/Green Mountain bioregions.

A slightly longer story

Raised in the woods of rural Ontario, I was introduced to the living world around me as a place of immeasurable beauty, intelligence and power. Aligning my individual existence with the wider community of life has been the focus of my education since I was very small.

​While studying for my undergraduate degree in literature and environmental studies at the University of Victoria, I had the privilege of taking classes with ethnobotanist Dr Nancy Turner. Nancy's work opened my eyes to the diverse and sophisticated relationships between Indigenous peoples and local plants in the Pacific Northwest bioregion, and catalyzed my desire to explore relationships of reciprocity between people and landscapes. I spent the next five years studying, practicing and writing about medical ethnobotany (how people use plants for healing in different cultural contexts), wild-harvesting and community-scale organic agriculture in Canada and Europe, quietly gathering stories of cultural and ecological restoration.

In 2010, I returned to university to earn an Master of Science degree at Schumacher College (University of Plymouth) in Devon, England, and again focused on medical ethnobotany. My community-based research, inspired by ecocultural restoration projects in Indigenous communities such as Waglisla (Bella Bella), British Columbia, explored honourable wild-harvesting practices with a focus on the medicinal shrub Oplopanax horridus, or Devil's Club. This intensive period of study and field work refined my perception of nature's intelligence as it flows through plants and people, and continues to deeply influence my teaching and writing today.​Since completing my master's degree, I have taught or facilitated courses on ethnobotany, sustainability and community resilience at Pacific Rim College, Schumacher College, Earthspring Sanctuary, McGill University's Office of Sustainability, and in the forests and fields of my new home, the Sutton Mountains of Québec's Eastern Townships, traditional territory of the Abenaki Nation. I continue to explore, teach and write about these topics alongside an international community of teachers, colleagues and friends.

Gratitude

I extend profound gratitude and respect to the many teachers I have been so fortunate to learn from and work with throughout my life, including ethnobotanist Nancy Turner; community herbalists Saci Spindler, Shauna Bernadette and Rosemary Gladstar; Heiltsuk elder and teacher Pauline Hilistis Waterfall; ecologist Stephan Harding; physicist and philosopher Henri Bortoft; systems theorist Philip Franses; and mythologist Jules Cashford. I am also deeply influenced by the brilliant writing of the late biologist Rachel Carson, cultural ecologist David Abram and ethnobotanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. Thank you!